Tag: WIP : Airfix Hawk

Time to finish this thing. The markings come from Scale Nutz, a defunct decal company based in Singapore. The sheet comes with full stencils for 1 aircraft but enough unit numbers to build any of the Hawk 109 and 209s in TNI-AU service in either squadron. I went with TT-1203 from Skadron 12 for this one. The decals were easy to use and reacted very well to Mark Softer.

Once cured and another gloss coat over the markings, I gave the kit a panel wash using Mig AMMO Deep Brown Panel Line Wash. The TNI-AU maintains their Hawks quite well so I didn’t do other weathering besides this panel wash. Once that has dried I gave the kit an overall flat coat.

Once the flat has cured, it was time to do final assembly. First up are the landing gear, gear doors, external fuel tanks and antennas. The pins on the antennas were all oversized so some trimming were required. The main gear struts were just about 2mm too short so the fit isn’t perfect there.

I was missing the blade antenna on top so I shaped one using 0.5mm plastic card. The clear part that goes into the recess on the spine was also oversized and I pinged it into my room when trying to trim it down. In the end I cut out a small circle from the clear part tree and used that instead.

Last off was the canopy masking and turns out there was some overspray inside the canopy. I popped this off, cleaned the inside, then re-attached.

This one’s definitely not my best finish with all the minor problems popping up. But at least it’s done.

Next up is another aircraft flown by the TNI-AU and my first modern Airfix kit. As usual, I begin with the ejection seats. The kit comes with seated pilots so no seatbelt details are provided. I made these from 1mm masking tape.

Cockpit details are decals and are the same for both cockpits. Oddly, the decal sheet provides 4 different front console decals. On the other hand, the instruction shows 1 type to use for both cockpits. Must be a misprint.

Overall details are nice although the panel lines are on the heavier side.

A check after the major components have been attached show some gap fixing required: some are quite obvious and deep while others simply need some quick sanding to resolve.

All in all though, quite a trouble-free build so far. Good thing as I’m trying to finish this by 17 August 2018. Fingers crossed.